King won the Hewlett-Packard commercial contest in 2010, and got a trip to the red carpet at the London Film Festival.[7] In 2013, he won YouTube's NextUp Creators contest.[8] In 2015, King and his wife Rachel Holm competed in the 28th season of American reality game show The Amazing Race. They were eliminated during the ninth leg of the race being placed sixth in the overall standings

King was born and raised in Portland, Oregon.[10] He is of half Chinese descent from his paternal side, one quarter Austrian and one quarter Nicaraguan descent from his maternal side.[11][12] King made his first film when he was seven using a home video camera.[13] When he was fourteen, he purchased video equipment including a Mac computer, cameras as well as a tripod and started making and editing videos.[7] He graduated from Biola University with a Cinema and Media Arts Major in December 2012

King made his account on Vine on September 9, 2013, when he saw that many of his friends had an account on the social media website. After creating an account on Vine, he decided to create one Vine each day for the next thirty days. After the success of his first few Vines, he decided to continue with creating and posting new Vines.[22]

He appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on January 29, 2014, and made several Vines with the crew of the show.[22] As of 2014, King creates Vine videos for a living and works out of his garage.[23] In an interview with The Independent, he said that he would want to direct feature films, preferably action-adventure movies, in the future.[4]

King has been featured in multiple media outlets for his Vines.[24][25] Chez Pazienza wrote about King that "this guy's stuff is pure magic (or at least the work of some very clever editing.)"[26] Mashable's Laura Vitto wrote of his work, "Vine star and filmmaker Zach King may not perform magic in the traditional sense, but his expertly-edited six-second videos could put David Blaine to shame."[3]

Writing for Complex magazine, J. Duaine Hahn wrote that "While people have hit Vine stardom for skits, or splicing together commentary with popular YouTube videos, King has gone the extra mile to use his six seconds to create magic, or the closest thing you can get to it with on a smartphone."[27]

In an interview, Zach said that producing a Vine usually takes upwards of 24 hours, with three to four hours of filming.